Industry experts have called on Nigerian businesses to pay more attention to managing their reputation if they want to achieve long-term success and sustainability. They made this known during a webinar titled “Protecting Your Organisation’s Reputation: The Critical Role of Risk Identification and Management,” organised by the National Planning Committee of the Nigeria Public Relations Week 2025 in collaboration with Drawbridge CM.
In a statement issued after the event, the President and Chairman of Council at the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Dr. Ike Neliaku, spoke about the growing importance of protecting a company’s reputation, brand identity, and building customer trust. Neliaku stressed that reputation matters greatly because it forms the foundation of stakeholder trust and sustains a brand’s identity. He said, “It drives customer dependability. For customers to continue doing business with you, they must believe you have their best interests at heart.”
Neliaku also warned that companies could lose up to nine per cent of their annual turnover if they suffer reputation damage, especially from incidents like data privacy breaches or ethics scandals. He cited a Cyber Magazine report, which revealed that companies across the world lose an average of $79 million per incident involving a reputation, data, or ethics crisis. To avoid such losses, he advised organisations to integrate reputation risk management into their broader risk management frameworks. According to him, the future of reputation protection will depend heavily on collaboration, proactive planning, and strategic integration.
The President of the Nigerian Chartered Risk Management Institute, Dr. Ezekiel Oseni, also spoke at the webinar. He described reputation risk as the biggest, most undervalued, and most difficult risk to manage. Oseni explained that while a company can easily calculate the value of its properties or equipment, reputation risk cannot be measured in the same way. “It can make the entire business go down overnight,” he warned.
Adding his voice to the conversation, the Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer of TPT International, Adetokunbo Modupe, urged Nigerian business owners to see reputation as a form of capital. Modupe said, “Business owners should be concerned about reputation because it is capital. If you lose it, you lose customer trust, and when trust is lost, everything else crumbles.”
He noted that a damaged reputation could seriously affect profitability, revenue, and even a company’s stock value. Modupe also reminded participants that reputational risk exists everywhere – in businesses, organisations, and all human activities. He advised businesses to develop a strong culture of risk management and strategies for handling crises when they occur.
The Lead Consultant at Drawbridge CM, Hassan Abdul, rounded up the webinar by stressing the need for organisations to be proactive about identifying and managing risks. Abdul said that protecting reputation should be a top priority for businesses, as it helps maintain stakeholder trust and ensures the survival of the organisation in difficult times.
The experts all agreed that businesses in Nigeria need to wake up to the reality that reputation is not something to be taken lightly. In today’s world, where news travels fast through social media and other digital platforms, a single scandal or misstep can ruin years of hard work. They urged companies to treat reputation risk just like they would treat financial or operational risks, making it a key part of their business strategies.
